Meaning of Christmas
by RintinDestiny
Summary: The Doctor get's sucked into the very first Christmas!


**Doctor Who: Meaning of Christmas-**

**Merry Christmas everyone! I like to try to release something Christmas based every year so this is my version of a Doctor Who Christmas back 2000 years ago :) This is with the 10th Doctor. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The echoing whir of engines faded in and out as a shadowy rectangle emerged out of nothingness. The blue paint of a police box stuck out in stark contrast with the beige and rosy colors of the evening desert. As soon as it had started though, the whirring ceased and the blue box stood solidly behind an abandoned ruin as if it had always been there. For only a few seconds it stood silently before a tall figure emerged from the side door, who stepped out, and looked around with a keen gaze.

"This doesn't look like the Pyramids in 2067..." the man muttered, putting on a pair of black rimmed glasses as he turned in a confused circle.

He started walking down a lonely, sandy path that wove in and out of the sand dunes; not seeming to have any particular direction that he wanted to go. His red converse sinking into the still warm sand as the man climbed up to the top of one of the higher dunes. The man gave a small smile as he looked over the desert until, in the distance, it led to a small glimmer of lights.

"Definitely not the pyramids." he confirmed to himself.

But, before the man could do anything a voice hailed him from behind and he whipped around, making his long trench coat flare out a behind him.

Along the top of the dunes came a small caravan full of camels and a few donkeys that were all led by foot servants in billowy robes. Slowly, they came closer until men could be made out on top of some of the camels.

The animals soon came to a halt directly in front of the man with the glasses and the man that rode upon it called down.

"You there stranger!"

"Hello!" he called back with another smile, now curious to whom he was now addressing.

The man on camel came even closer, "Are you here to perhaps follow the sign of the king?"

"The sign?" the other asked, his sharp eyes sparkling with even more interest.

"The sign in the sky!" the camel man said in joyful surprise and pointed upward with a ring bedecked hand.

Slowly, the man in glasses looked upwards into the darkening sky and saw a bright, gleaming star that was bigger than any other that had appeared. It had four points, the bottom one being longer the rest as it stood out in the sky.

"Curious..." he muttered as he took off his glasses and squinted at the star.

"There shouldn't be a star that bright in this galaxy."

"What is that sign?" he called back to the man on the camel who seemed confused by his question.

Instead the man, with the help of one of the servants, lept down from the camel and came up to the other man.

"Who are you man?" he asked, folding his hands inside his robes massive sleeves.

"I'm the Doctor. And you? It looks like you've traveled a mighty long way." the Doctor answered back as he observed the man in front of him.

He was an older man, perhaps in his mid forties, and wore extravagant robes that seemed to be made of dark blue silk. He had a black beard and mustache that were slowly going gray at the edges. He seemed to be eastern Asian in appearance but not strictly Chinese, more mongol or middle eastern.

"Ah, you are a man of medicine. I, and my fellow travelers, have come from the East in order to find the king that this star has announced. We are magi that must find the source of this great occurrence."

The Doctor looked back up at the strange star, feeling very interested now in when and where he was.

"Do you know of the town that is down there?" the Doctor asked, putting his glasses back on as he looked back to the man before him.

"That is Nazareth, the place in which the star directs. The home of the king." the man said cryptically.

"Can I go with you, to see this uh...king?" the Doctor asked quickly, a hunch forming in his mind.

The magi paused for a moment before going over to speak with another of his company. For several minutes they spoke before the same man as before came back and with a friendly smile nodded.

"Yes, my companions say that it would be good for you to travel with us."

* * *

The Doctor had to admit that he was sad when the camel he was riding on came to a halt. He had quite enjoyed riding on the lumbering humped animal as he hadn't done so since visiting Queen Cleopatra.

"We are here my friend." the magi said, his friendly demeanor replaced by a more somber one.

The Doctor looked and saw that they had stopped before a small mud brick house that had a single lamp lit window. The more he thought about it the more he was convinced that his hunch was right.

"This definitely isn't 2067..." he said to himself as he watched several of the men on the camels bring out small jars or boxes.

"What are those?" he asked as the company walked towards the house.

"Gifts fit for the king, precious herbs and gold." another of the magi replied as the first man announced them to whoever was inside the house.

The Doctor watched at the men entered the house but did not follow, choosing to listen instead. Back and forth the wise men talked with what seemed to be a man and a woman. By now the Doctor realized that they had been speaking ancient Hebrew as each of the men gave their gifts. Carefully, he sidled over to the doorway and looked into the dimly lit room.

As he thought there was a man and young woman sitting on mats on the floor with the robed men bowing to them.

_'Not to them...'_ the Doctor realized as he looked closer and saw a small child that couldn't have been older than three or four sitting on the floor.

There wasn't anything particular about the child himself, he was normal looking as any other little baby but...

There was just something that made the hair on the back of the Doctor's neck stand on end when he stared at the child. The...knowledge...yes that was the word that he was looking for. The child seemed to hold such knowledge. The longer that the Doctor watched the more he knew that his hunch was correct.

He wasn't in the year 2067, he was around the year 6 B.C. The very first Christmas.

"Gold..." he looked on as a silk purse was passed from one of the men to the mother of the child.

"Frankincense..." the Doctor could smell the pungent scent of the herbs as a second man handed over a elegantly carved box.

"Myrrh..." he breathed, knowing the symbolism behind the ritualistic herb.

_'Used in preparing a body for burial.'_ the Doctor thought to himself as the last container, a simple clay jar, was handed over.

He saw now that he had just landed in the middle of one of the most important events in history.

"A fixed point..." the Doctor muttered as he looked once more at the magi then at the child. But as he continued to realize where he really was the Doctor watched as the men rose and exchanged farewells with the couple before moving to leave.

He wordlessly moved as the men filed passed him, their expressions now varying from joyfulness to somber reflection. The Doctor glanced back one last time into the small, inconspicuous house at the small child. Now sleepily yawning as his mother picked him up, cooing his famous name.

"Doctor, are you going to be traveling back with us? I'm sure King Herod would be most interested in meeting you." the first magi he had met asked as he go on top of his camel.

"Herod?" the Doctor said quizzically, recognizing the name.

"Yes, his majesty requested that we return to tell him where the child lay so that he may also come and worship him." the man said, turning his camel back the way he had come.

"A fixed point..." he muttered again, memories of his journey to Pompeii arising.

"I'm sorry?" the wise man asked, halting his camel.

"It's another fixed point!" the Doctor said excitedly.

"But this isn't supposed to happen, history dictates that you lot go back to the East." the Doctor continued to talk more to himself than the man upon the camel.

Whom seemed entirely confused by the now manic pacing of the Doctor.

"What are you talking about?"

The Doctor paused in his muttering as he seemed to have a revelation.

"I'm...oh no...I'm the _angel_!?" he began to laugh to himself.

The man looked suspicious and urged his camel forward, taking the Doctor's crazy muttering as a no.

"Wait, waitwaitwait!" the Doctor ran after the magi as fast as he could, waving his hands.

"What is it Doctor? Have you decided to come?"

The man shook his head, "No, and you can't go either. If you do the entire world will be thrown out of order."

The magi looked startled by these words.

"What? But that would be disobeying a direct order from a king!"

The Doctor shook his head again, "If you go a different way you won't have to worry about Herod."

The magi stopped, halfway up a sand dune, clearly torn between listening to an order given to him or listening to advice of some man he had just met.

"How do I know what you say is true? Are you a soothsayer or prophet?" the magi asked.

"No, I'm more of a messenger." the Doctor hid a grin.

The man on the camel didn't seemed convinced and continued up the sand dune and out of the city.

"No! Please, don't go back!" the Doctor continued to plead, struggling to keep up with the camel in the loose sand.

"How can I trust you man of medicine? Do you have proof of your knowledge?" the man called back, still riding forward towards where the Doctor had met him.

The Doctor made it to the top of the dune, panting hard as he raced to think of some way to warn the magi of danger of what they could do.

That's when he saw the corner of his blue box sticking up behind the old ruins below the sand dunes and he smiled.

* * *

"So we are not going to back to the king?" a dark skinned man in a red robe asked his bearded companion.

"No, the Doctor has warned me of the consequences. I have seen what would be and we cannot allow that to happen. We shall take another route."

The other magi looked at each other but did not dispute their comrades wishes and instead turned to the north to begin their journey home. None of them noticing the whirring noise in the distance as a police box floated into the star speckled sky.

But, inside the fading blue box, the Doctor smiled to himself as he whistled _'We Three Kings'_ to himself as he fiddled with a lever on the TARDIS's controls. Setting the course for the Pyramids of 2067.


End file.
